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Full Professor
David Stuckler is a Full Professor in the department of Social and Political Sciences.
Alberto Zanardi is currently a member of the Board of the Italian Parliamentary Budget Office. He is full professor in Public Finance at the University of Bologna (currently on leave). He graduated from Bocconi University and received a M.Sc. in Econ ...
2021 - n° 147 29/07/2021
Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education requires a solid grasp of the impact of student autonomy on learning. In this paper, we estimate the effect of an increased autonomy policy for higher-performing students on short- and longer-term school outcomes. We exploit an institutional setting with high demand for autonomy in randomly formed classrooms. Identification comes from a natural experiment that allowed higher-achieving students to miss 30 percent more classes without penalty. Using a difference-in-difference-in-differences approach, we find that allowing higher-achieving students to skip class more often improves their performance in high-stakes subjects and increases their university admission outcomes. Higher-achieving students in more academically diverse classrooms exerted more autonomy when allowed to.
Sofoklis Goulas, Silvia Griselda, Rigissa Megalokonomou
Keywords: learning autonomy,school attendance,returns to education,natural experiment